Category: Aude

I don’t think the humans in my life whom I love would be happy for me to plaster their images all over the blogosphere. I have no pets, beloved or otherwise. So I’ll have to look a little further.

Here’s a little miscellany of images, beloved images:

The Yorkshire Dales, whose rolling hills, bisected by ancient drystone walls I missed so much during our years in France.

The Pyrenees, from their richly flowered springtime meadows through to winter, when their rocky slopes are covered in deep snow, and which I now miss every single day. I’ll miss the shared picnics on our walks together, when our French friends pooled resources, and we ate everybody’s offerings of home-cured sausage, local cheeses, bread, home-baked cakes together with wine and somebody’s grandfather’s very special eau de vie.

Springtime daffodils. Every year I go into deep mourning when they wither, die and finally become untidy heaps of dying leaves. I’m happier now as they thrust their sheathed stems through the hard soil, promising to flower soon- but not quite yet.

There are books: I need a pile beside my bed to get me through the night.

A single, perfect cup of coffee from Bean and Bud in Harrogate.

Skeins of geese flying overhead mark the seasons here, and I love their haunting, raucous cries.

And so on….

The Pyrenees seen from St. Julien de Gras Capou in summertime.

A shared picnic near Montaillou, in March.

The Nidderdale Way.

Near Pateley Bridge.

We’ve already seen our first daffodils in North Stainley this year.

Just a random pile of books. I don’t think I’ve read most of these.

Our beloved Bean and Bud,

Geese flying uncharacteristically untidily over Marfield Wetlands.

I’ll end though with this. I wasn’t beloved of this elephant in Kumbakonam, Tamil Nadu, who was only doing his job when I visited him ten years ago on my Indian Adventure. But I felt beloved and very special when he raised his trunk and brought it down upon my shoulder – his very distinctive way of blessing me.

Elephant in the temple of Adi Kumbeswarar, Kumbakonam, ready to give me his blessing.

This post is really just a chance to post a few photos from a couple of recent walks, one in the Ariège, and one in the Aude. Each walk brought out some of the contrasts and similarities between the two Départements.

The more local walk, near Ventenac last Sunday, was near meadows where cattle grazed, through fields being prepared for sowing feed crops such as maize, and through oak and beech forest. Though there are villages dotted about, the area is still thinly populated, densely forested. During the Second World War it provided cover for the Spanish Maquis , scourge of the German army. With the support of many, but not all locals, the Maquis came to regard the area as a centre of gravity, from which they emerged to pass soldiers and refugees across the mountains, and to organise acts of resistance to German occupation . You’ll find monuments to their activities, their battles, their acts of martyrdom all over the area. It’s easy to see how, in this large territory, with under-developed links of communication, the Germans had such difficulties keeping tabs on the Maquis’ whereabouts.

Early wood anemones

This monument at Calzan commemorates the activities of the Maquis in the area, particularly their involvement in the liberation of Foix in 1944.

Many of the mountains that day were surrounded by a cloudy halo.

The more distant peaks are still thickly covered in snow.

We had a 360 degree vantage point: so every view was different

Far beneath the moody sky is the city of Pamiers.

Approaching journey’s end.

Over in the Aude on Thursday, near Esperaza, we saw no farm animals, but our path took us past vineyards where the vines were being hard-pruned ready for 6 months of vigorous growth and grape production. Martine, from a wine-producing family, explained some of the different methods of pruning – and there are dozens. Older varieties of vine, unsupported by wires, may be pruned with an open centre, so the core looks almost like a bowl. Other kinds of grape usually require training along wires: all sorts of schools of thought here. These days, much harvesting is mechanical. Martine’s family send their grapes to a wine co-operative for processing. This co-operative sends an oenologist every year to analyse their grapes and those of all the other members of the cooperative. Then he will book everybody a two-day spot with the mechanical harvester at what he believes to be the optimum moment for their particular harvest. Few grapes cannot be harvested in this way, but the local Blanquette de Limoux is one. Its low-growing grapes are unsuited to mechanical methods. With wine-production the main agricultural industry, the villages here have a properous air to them.

A moody morning sky.

In th Aude, Bugarach is never far away.

Vines and mountains.

Amond blossom against a midday sky

Old, gnarled, bowl-shaped vine.

Young vine, pruned with just one main shoot, and requiring support.

Both walks shared a fair bit up uphill (and therefore downhill) marching. And in both cases, the rewards were in the views of the distant Pyrenees, still covered in snow. In the Ariège, you’ll be looking to recognise the peaks of Saint Barthélemy and Soularac, whereas in the Aude, you’ll have no difficulty in recognising Bugarach looming above the surrounding peaks.

These last walks are bitter-sweet. We’re enjoying them, but not enjoying the fact that, for the time being, there are (almost) no more to come.

About a year ago, someone suggested ‘Les Collines du Vent’ – the Windy Hills – for one of the Sunday walks with our Laroque walking group. The appointed day came, and it rained – a lot. We re-scheduled. The day came again, and it rained – a lot. We re-scheduled. The day came yet again, and it was foggy, a real pea-souper: the kind of fog that almost any Frenchman confidently assures us blankets London every day of the year (any Frenchman who’s read Charles Dickens that is).

And so it went on for five or six attempts. Today though, it didn’t rain. Nor was it foggy. In fact it was sunny until we left the Ariège and approached our destination in the hilly countryside in the Aude outside Castelnaudary. Then it became rather grey, though not menacing enough to stop us in our tracks. What DID nearly stop us in our tracks was the wind. The countryside here is rolling and open. The idea of any walk in the area is to get up there and stride from hilltop to hilltop. But that wind! It gusted and blew. It snatched us off-balance. It whistled through our trousers and tried to grab our hats. And it was only doing what it apparently does almost every day of the year. No wonder our path led us past a windmill during the afternoon.

The weather brightened, and we had wonderful all-round panoramas. Sadly we couldn’t quite see the Pyrenees: distant mists saw them off. And in the early afternoon, we had evidence that we really were the tough guys we thought we were, battling through that wind. We were overtaken by a battalion of the French Foreign Legion in training. Though admittedly they were all additionally burdened by enormous rucksacks that must have weighed 40 kilos. And guns. If you’ve read ‘Beau Geste’ you will remember that this band of soldiers is recruited from foreign nationals who wish to serve in the French army (don’t ask….). Coming from different countries, different cultures, the men are put through very challenging training designed to build their esprit de corps. We noted that Marcel, our leader for the day was putting us through a similar programme. Though at the end, he offered us a large slice of the Galette des Rois which he himself had made. We’d already had our usual lunch time bonanza of wine-and-cake-sharing. But nobody refused this last additional treat. We felt we’d earned it.

Well, not much anyway. You can’t go walking in that patch of the Aude near la Digne d’Amont and not enjoy looking at those vineyards marching across to the snow-covered Pyrenees one way, and the equally distant (and almost equally snow-covered) Montagne Noir the other.

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Today though, let’s not have a travelogue. Let’s look at one or two of the other things that caught our eye on today’s walk, sunny but oh-so-cold. We began walking in temperatures of not much more than minus 5 degrees. There was the ice itself, underfoot. The cold froze the mud and made it good and hard to walk on.

There were the frost-framed leaves mulching the ground.

There was a giggle-worthy notice on an electricity sub-station.

And in the tiny village of Toureilles (population 143), there was a statue to its most famous son. Pierre Bayle (1783-1794) was the youngest soldier ever to die for France. A drummer boy in the Republican Army, he was engaged in the campaign to prevent the Spanish invade Roussillon, and died in battle at Figueres, aged 11.

As we left Toureilles, along a single track road , we came upon a rather fine, wide, but very short stretch of road, with a fine stretch of car park along its length. It led only to a dusty track.If we didn’t know why it was there, neither did the villagers. Here’s what they thought of it.

‘Before: a pretty path. Now: urbanisation of our countryside’

‘Frequent landings’ – on the car park or runway presumably

Back in Digne d’Amont, the municipal notice board had news of an evening’s Bingo (Loto) on – shucks, we’ve missed it – 16th November. Prizes? Two loads of wood for burning, a whole pig (dead, of course) and a hamper of beef as well as other smaller prizes.

And at the end, Gilbert produced a cake for us to eat, formerly much enjoyed locally and which he’d managed to find out about: amazérat, a pastry with a solid bite to it and strongly flavoured with aniseed.

We were walking in the Aude today, and with every step we took, we realised that harvest season is well on its way.

Sorghum grains for animal feed swelled in fields where last year sunflowers had grown. A few seeds had escaped the Autumn harvest, and so this year a few cheeky sunflowers raised their heads above the more lowly winter feed.

Sunflowers among the sorghum.

Grapes cluster on the vine. They’ve grown almost as much as they intend, but they still have work to do. Most are still a bright acidic green. A few are starting to blush a bruised pink. Some have even achieved a classic purple: but they’re not ripe yet. We know. We tried one or two.

Grren grapes

Pink grapes

Purple grapes

And those fields of sunflowers, Apart from one field’s worth, they no longer look like those cheerful images you see on postcards from our region. Their bright sunny faces no longer track the movement of the sun as it travels across the sky. Instead, they’ve developed a hang-dog look as the weight of their maturing seeds pulls their heads earthwards.

Then there were almonds. We found a few had fallen already, so made a handful of creamy nuts into a small 11 o’clock treat. Walnuts are a different matter. They’re still heavily enclosed in their thick green fleshy coats. It’ll be a few weeks before this protection dries and splits to reveal the ripened nuts within.

A solitary almond

Ripening walnuts

Blackberries in the breeze

Apples? Yes, a few, but they’re still green, with white flesh that browns as soon as it’s bitten into. Blackberries? Hardly any have turned black. They’re still very small and green, or rather small and pink. We’ll have to wait.

So far then, only the hay bales sit plumply at the edges of the fields, ready for winter. The other crops soak up the remaining summer sunshine, fatten, ripen, and wait for the moment when they too will be gathered in.

Their wings seem to get so ragged. They love to gather in their hundreds in damp spaces

So hard to pin down: they were never still for a moment

I’ve never been all that good at butterfly spotting. Back in the UK, I could manage my red admirals, peacock butterflies and cabbage whites. Oh yes, I could certainly identify those pesky cabbage whites. Their eggs were usually plastered over the undersides of nearly every vegetable I had on my allotment.

On Sunday though, we had a real butterfly bonanza. We had a perfect day’s walking on the nearby Plateau de Sault, near Belcaire. It was perfect because the scenery was friendly: gently rising and falling lightly forested slopes offered distant panoramas of the Pyrenees. The wonderful weather was bright and sunny, without being too hot. The walk offered challenges but no real difficulty; good companionship too. What made this Sunday memorable though were the butterflies. At this altitude – about 1000 metres – the summer flowers were still bright and fresh, and the butterflies couldn’t leave them alone. They fluttered ahead of us every step of the way, and we finally gave up exclaiming over their delicate beauty.

What we couldn’t do was identify them. This evening I’ve pored over sites on the internet. I’ve excitedly identified a specimen. Then I’ve looked at the next image… and the next… and realised that my confident identification isn’t at all secure. Tentatively, then, I’ve named my photos. But I rely on you, dear reader, to put me right about the undoubted mistakes I’ve made.

Not a butterfly at all: a Six-spot Burnet, Zygaena filipendulae, a day-flying moth

In the end though, whether I’ve been able to name them or not, I carry with me the memory of a summer’s day made extra special by the presence of those butterflies wheeling, turning, diving and fluttering, rarely still, but constantly engaging our admiration and attention

Late on Wednesday afternoon we went to Puivert. Why not? It’s a pretty town not far from here, with a beach beside a charming lake.

When we arrived at 5 o’clock, the car park was already almost full. We weren’t surprised. Nobody was leaving the beach: in fact, like us, dozens of people were making tracks for it, burdened with swimming gear, beach towels, fold-up chairs, picnic hampers.

We were getting there early, to make sure of a grand-stand view. After the regular summer-Wednesday-evening market, there was going to be a firework display, and we knew it would be good. We picked our spot under a tree and near the lake. Nearby, a musician set up his stall, and his balladeering (think Simon and Garfunkel) helped while away the evening. A spot of swimming (not for me, not this time) a spot of people watching, and soon it was time to think about food. About half those market-traders had set up stoves and ovens and complicated gas-rings and were busy slicing, stirring, grilling, frying and baking to provide meals for the hundreds of us who planned to eat ‘sur place’ as the evening wore on and darkness fell. What to choose. Local grilled meat? Tapas? Pizza? Something salady? Paella? Something oriental? Wandering round in a state of terminal indecision’s part of the fun.

We chose paella, Susie and I, our young companions went Chinese, and we all finished off with sheep’s milk ice-cream (rose petal’s very good, so’s speculoos).

Then it was time to move nearer the water, listen to the nearby singer and the croaking frogs, and wait for darkness.

I enjoy fireworks. But about 10-15 minutes is usually enough. There are only so many rockets and golden fountains you can exclaim over. This though, was different.

As it became truly night, laser beams (‘testing, testing’) drew blue lines and beams across the darkness. White smoke emerged from large pipes at the water’s edge, and billowed softly across the lake. What on earth?

Then it began. Laser beams drew architect’s plans in the sky. These futuristic ‘buildings’ revealed clouds above them: ah! That’s what the smoke was for. And above them, orange and red firework fountains dripped from the sky, seen through the ‘ceilings’ and the clouds. The laser drawings slipped and slid, plunged and dived, in an ever-changing palette of electric blues, citric greens, livid yellows and magenta. The fireworks went relentlessly on, mirroring the insistent rhythms of dramatic, dynamic music which seemed to herald the Apocalypse. I don’t know how to describe how utterly involving and exciting it was. My camera – no camera – begins to do justice to that extraordinary marriage of lightshow and fireworks.

After 20 minutes, it stopped. Just like that. We held our collective breath, utterly silent, hundreds of us. And then we applauded, wildly, recognising the genius of what we’d just seen, and knowing that an encore simply wasn’t going to happen. Not this year.

It was, quite simply, one of the most exciting and compelling spectacles I’ve seen. Ever.